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Thursday, August 2, 2012

Magic, they say, is a product of fraud, a trick of the eye,
an illusion. I went up to Baguio last weekend with little expectation of fun.
It was raining the past days and the piles of work I had to endure before
leaving were such intense, I no longer had the energy and enthusiasm to explore
the old city I’ve never been to. But there behind the cold mist, the jagged
mountain peaks and the sprawling shades of green, there I'm telling you, I saw and experienced magic.

There was a feeling of home when I stepped inside our rented
place. Must be the sight of our landlady’s small dog at her gates, or the smell
of pine trees around. It could be the quiet neighborhood. Or most likely, the
six other men that went with me.

I’ll tell you about Bino, who orchestrated a mini birthday
celebration with a cake and a candle that says I’m 25, a gallon of ice cream
and a bowl of spaghetti with a cheese that gave it an extra kick. There was
Carlo, my co-celebrant. At the age of 26, he prides himself the sturdy
“suplado;” the small boy ripping his muscles in a journey he calls “road to
hotness.”

And then there was Leo and Nimmy who changed my view on relationships,
even marriage. It’s just that it was hard to believe in something that caused
you so much pain, destruction, something that was never real to me. You see
them en sync with their actions, sweet but subtle, so that something beyond the
goofiness and puns there I saw a simple truth, even hope springing beyond their
clasped hands.

I never knew Mar neither Theo. But I know that Mar is a
gentleman and that Theo is not as quiet as people perceived him to be after spending days with them.

Like those two, I never knew Baguio before. The quiet
hillside, those towering pine trees, lustful flowers tempting you to pick them,
the sun peaking behind the threatening clouds, the morning mist, the crisp sound
of the sing-song melody of Ilocano words – all are but foreign before.

In Tam-Awan Village, a little far from the main city, lies a
pinch of the splendor of the Igorot culture. It rained on our way up the
mountain, mud gushing down beneath our wet feet as countless Northern birds
taunt us with their surreal chirpings. You look up and you notice how closer
you are to heaven, to the gods and goddesses to whom my forefathers once prayed
mightily for good harvest, for sons and wives and other worldly graces. I said
“forefathers” because my dear lolo was an Igorot from the Mountain
Province.

The locals danced their ritual in colorful bahag and tapis,
black feathers gleaming as their hands swayed in rhythm of two. There was a
fertility hut, a house with three rice guardians in it and a maiden goddess
hidden behind the bushes watching our every move.

The Baguio I heard is home to many people I know. They would
say it is magical. That magic lies within a university where they completed
four years of education. Some calls the magic by ghostly stories; tales of
apparition and ladies in white picking on the tourists. Others found magic in
rows of strawberry beds, the many ritual dances, with those cheap sumptuous meals
and the cry of bamboo flute.

But Baguio indeed to me is magical. I don’t know but I don’t
think it’s the horses pretending to be unicorns in their pink skins and flowers
and rainbows attached to their heads. There was neither delusion nor illusion in
its thick fog hovering around its fields.

When Carlo cooked dinner of daing na bangus, tuyo, salted
eggs mixed with tomatoes and we feasted on them with our bare hands, there I
saw the works of magic. There was magic when I blew that candle on top of our
birthday cake. There was magic as we heave, catching our breath as we hike over
that hillside with no cab in sight to take us home. There was magic when Theo
slammed my arm laughing at my jokes. There was magic when Mar took that picture
of me with mountains and trees and clouds and laughter.

Magic. It’s a cliché, of course. But clichés tell us what we
experienced, what we went through is something that others already walked upon
and that we are not alone after all.

As we bid goodbye in that cold dank bus terminal, there was
the usual fear of separation. This is something silly about me, what they call
SAD (separation anxiety disorder) although I’d like to think of it as normal,
the human side of me as opposed to treating it as a disorder. I thought as we
part ways that night, I’d lose the magic. But as I browse on our countless
photos, the neverending jokes in Twitter and BBM and future plans of more
adventure, I think, and I hope, that the magical stories I’m about to tell are only beginning.